Escolar Documentos
Profissional Documentos
Cultura Documentos
To cite this article: Duane Rousselle (2012) Georges Bataille's post-anarchism, Journal of Political
Ideologies, 17:3, 235-257, DOI: 10.1080/13569317.2012.716612
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13569317.2012.716612
Introduction
Post-anarchist philosophy has been widely regarded as an attempt to challenge the
ontological essentialism of the traditional anarchist discourse. The problem for
the post-anarchists is that by focusing exclusively on the critique of ontological
essentialism and universalism inherent in the traditional anarchist discourse, postanarchists have demonstrated that they are unable to envision a response to metaethical questions that occur outside of the universalism/relativism pair. The postanarchist suspicion of universal ethical frameworks exposes the extent to which, as
Slavoj Zizek maintains, cynical ideology leaves untouched the fundamental level
of ideological fantasy.1 In other words, the post-anarchist fantasy of a sensible
ethical system structures the reality of their cynicism towards ethical universalism.
This commitment to sensibility is itself the ideological gesture that remains to be
interrogated.
Contemporary meta-ethical philosophy shines a light on the thread that
connects universalist and relativist meta-ethical ideologies. By retreating into a
form of epistemological relativism, the post-anarchists have only demonstrated
the extent to which they have inherited the ideology of the prevailing ethical
ISSN 1356-9317 print; ISSN 1469-9613 online/12/03023523 q 2012 Taylor & Francis
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13569317.2012.716612
duane rousselle
systems. In keeping with the ethical trajectory of post-anarchist philosophy, postanarchists could stand to benefit by responding nihilistically rather than
relativistically to the epistemological problem of universalism. They could also
take the ontological problematic of non-being to its limit by rejecting the subject
as the locus of ethical agency. I shall aim to demonstrate that this latter position is
correlative to the meta-ethical position of Georges Bataille.
There have been two related ways in which to understand the location of this
radical outside, and each should be distinguished from the notion of an outside to
radical politics as outlined by the post-anarchist Saul Newman.3 There is first the
obvious outside, the influence of which is felt to come from the extimacy4 of
the anarchist tradition. This is the anarchist-ic outside that is discovered by
bringing anarchism into a relationship with disciplines outside of the narrow field
of political economy. This refers also, more generally, to those bodies of thought
or practices that have recently been described as being anarchist-ic so as to
describe something that is almost anarchist but also not quite anarchist.
But there is also the real outside whose effects are felt from the intimate and
yet unintelligible core of the tradition. The initial phase or introductory period of
post-anarchism, described eloquently by Evren,5 is the exploration of this second
ill-defined relationship to a real outside. In the anglophone world, the
manifestation of this outside has brought about the interrogation of the anarchist
tradition from the inside through a questioning of the ontological essentialism
inherent to much of classical anarchist philosophy. Andrew Koch and Todd May,
for example, each in their own way, have argued that any ontological conception
236
duane rousselle
about post-structuralist political theory with the general director of the Institute for
Anarchist Studies, Mark Lance. In his own words:
I was trying to explain to a friend, Mark Lance, what the political theory of poststructuralism was all about. He listened more patiently than he should have and then said,
It sounds like anarchism to me. That comment was the seed of an article [ . . . ] in 1989 and
eventually of the present work [The Political Philosophy of Post-Structuralist Anarchism ].
And Mark Lance has, over the years, provided me with intellectual riches far exceeding my
ability to put them to good use.13
This chance encounter with Mark Lance shaped the ethical core of Mays poststructuralist anarchismperhaps it was even the seed for a later book on poststructuralist ethics (crucially, now with the anarchism qualifier, and the rich
tradition that founded such an ethics, omitted).14 I should qualify my claim here: it
is not Mays labour for anarchism that is my point in all of this; it is precisely the
relationship that Mays work has tended to exhibit with the central anarchist
discourse. What post-structuralist political theory needed, and what it was unable
to define from within its own discursive parameters, was its anti-authoritarian
ethics. May has weeded the anarchist tradition of what, by implication, has not
been realized from within its own discursive boundaries and then retained the antiauthoritarian ethical commitmenttranslated as a critique of humanism and
naturalismby another name: post-structuralist anarchism. May has put this most
eloquently:
[P]ost-structuralist theory is indeed anarchist. It is in fact more consistently anarchist than
traditional anarchist theory has proven to be. The theoretical wellspring of anarchismthe
refusal of representation by political or conceptual means in order to achieve selfdetermination along a variety of registers and at different local levelsfinds its
underpinnings articulated most accurately by the post-structuralist political theorists.15
One might question this thesis on the grounds that Mays preoccupation with poststructuralism has been founded on the latent ethical code of traditional anarchism,
whereas post-structuralist political theory, even though it very often demonstrates
evidence to the contrary, does not inherently imply an anti-authoritarian ethos.
Upon further inspection it becomes difficult to define what precisely is meant by
the term post-structuralismespecially in consideration of the fact that many of
those individuals most typically associated with the post-structuralist moment
have not themselves accepted the designation. To the post-anarchists, Simon
Choat has posed the question: what is meant by post-structuralism [ . . . ]?16
A response, I suspect, is not forthcoming (and why should it?).
While there is certainly an anarchistic reading of select post-structuralist
authors, there is also at least one other possible reading of post-structuralist ethics
that reveals a position much more akin to a crude liberal democratic ethics of
responsibility. If, on the other hand, one describes a particular philosopher who
has often been associated with the post-structuralism movement, and if one can
relate this author back to an anarchistic impulse, one is typically only able to do so
by first achieving a distance from the ethical language of anarchism: the language
238
duane rousselle
the position that anarchism is a tradition of canonical thinkersrather, one should
think of it as a tradition based on canonical practices which are, in turn, premised
upon a canonical selection of ethical premises. If this is the case, then the paradigm
shift that erupted at the broader level and made its way into the anarchist discourse
as post-anarchism allowed for the realization and elucidation of the ethical
component of traditional anarchist philosophy as an attack on the authority of
essentialist ontologies. This is the ethical imperative that was grounded in the
anarchist tradition and that found new expression in post-structuralist concerns.
The critics of post-anarchism,24 whether by directing their criticism exclusively
towards post-anarchisms prefix (as well as the newness) or by directing it
toward post-anarchisms reduction of the classical anarchist tradition, have
pursued problematic lines of critique. With regards to the first manoeuvre, the
critics have fluctuated between two mutually exclusive arguments. The first of
which was that post-anarchism represented an attempt to rescue classical
anarchism, a supposedly stale orthodoxy, from its presumed inadequacies.25 This
critique focused on the implied claim that post-anarchism has attempted to
abandon classical anarchism while at the same time it has attempted to rescue
traditional anarchism from its own demise. The obvious question one should ask
is: which is it, abandon or rescue? With regards to the second manoeuvre, some
critics have interrogated what they saw as the reductive elements that were found
to be at the core of the post-anarchist ideology. It should be noted that most of
these critiques have aimed squarely at Saul Newmanand in particular, they have
taken aim at just one of his books, From Bakunin to Lacan26rather than more
broadly at the post-anarchists as a whole (excluding, for example, the nonanglophone post-anarchists out of Spain, Italy, Brazil, Germany, France and
Turkey, whose contributions have been enormous). A word of caution is in order:
to reduce post-anarchism to only that which has been expressed by Saul Newman,
or to anglophone post-anarchists, is to fall victim to precisely the attitude Newman
sought to avoid. Critics should be made aware of their own reduction of the
post-anarchist body of thought.
Sureyyya Evrens argument is that the reduction of the classical tradition to any
number of select representatives or readings has already been there within all of
the traditional texts (it is not the invention of post-anarchists)that this was the
founding for post-anarchisms introductory period does not in any way discount
post-anarchisms further critique of essentialism and reductionism even while it is
representative of such a tendency. This tendency to reduce the tradition continues
today within the anarchist studies milieu and it goes largely unchallenged.
For example, in a recent publication, Contemporary Anarchist Studies,27 the
editors delineate three forms of anarchism in the introduction of the book, as its
foundation: Classical Anarchism,28 1960s 1970s Anarchism29 and Contemporary Anarchism.30 Why does the reduction of classical anarchism here to a
monolithic whole founded within a particular lineage of time, or as the reduction
of classical anarchism to a selection of philosophers (Proudhon, Bakunin and
Kropotkin) go unchallenged as the problematic of contemporary anarchist studies?
Incidentally, what the editors describe as Contemporary Anarchism has strong
240
duane rousselle
define itself apart from another ideological system. The comparison to Marxist
political philosophy is useful to the extent that any tradition can be uniquely
situated in reference to another tradition with which it closely aligns itself. In any
case, there is a presumed consensus among anarchist scholars that anarchism is to
ethics what Marxist has been to strategy. For example, David Graeber has argued,
as Simon Critchley retells it, Marxism is typically a theoretical or analytical
discourse about revolutionary strategy, whereas anarchism can be understood as
an ethical discourse about revolutionary practice.38
It is this ethical standpoint that has been repressed by the anarchist tradition (and
post-anarchism is, if I may be permitted, one example of the return of the
repressed). According to Todd May, contemporary anarchists have never much
cared to develop their meta-ethical philosophy,39 and yet they have taken great
care to describe their tradition as an ethical one. So when the anarchists tell others
that theirs is an ethical tradition, obvious and hackneyed as this presupposition at
once appears for the rest of us, what reason do others have to take us seriously? It is
in this sense that I call the absurd ethics of anarchism its absent centre. The ethical
task set before the anarchists is one of either discovering the latent impulse anew
in manifest contenta questionable enterprise as this subordinates the unique
attribute of anarchism, its ethics, to a theoryor else rejecting the premise that
radical politics depends essentially upon caricatures of ontology or epistemology
through which truth and non-being are positively exaggerated in order to uphold
certain authoritarian political effects.
Post-anarchist philosophers have been preoccupied with outlining an antiessentialist variant of anarchist political philosophy, but they have hitherto relied
on relativist epistemological approaches. For example, Andrew Koch has argued
that, in contrast to an ontological defence of anarchism, an epistemologically
based theory of anarchism questions the processes out of which a
characterization of the individual occurs.40 If the validity of truth-claims can
be questioned, then the political structures that rest upon these foundations must
also be suspected.41 For Koch, this approach receives its political voice in the
ideology of democratic pluralism42 whereby the plurality of languages and
the individuated nature of sensory experience suggest that each denotative and
prescriptive statement must be unique to each individual.43 For Saul Newman,
post-anarchisms reliance on a radical outside to power opens anarchism up to a
truly radical democratic politics: This democratic ethics of radical pluralism is
possible because it does not start by presupposing an essential[ist] identity as its
foundation and limit [ . . . ] This is the democracy both demanded, and made
possible, by the politics of post-anarchism.44 According to Sasha K.,45
meaningful political engagement is precluded by such an approach as anarchism
becomes only one approach among many without the universal relevance required
for any revolutionary discourse. Contrarily, to begin from a place of ethics
presumes the possibility of political engagement and revolutionary commitment
without necessarily collapsing into prescriptivism or, relatedly, relativism. If postanarchism is to rise above the criticism laid against itthat it is postrevolution46post-anarchists will have to remain firmly outside of the
242
duane rousselle
view (the latent content). While there is a truth that occurs by way of appearances,
this truth is always disrupted by a larger truth that resists containment by the
appearance. This latter force is truth properit is the source of truthsbecause it
temporarily sustains the cohesion promised by the appearance. As Bataille put it,
appearance constitutes a limit [but] what truly exists is a dissolution.53 In this
sense the word dissolution means frivolity, moral laxness, dissolute living.54
To bring this point to its full effect, Bataille argued that [i]t is the aperture which
opens the possibility of vision but which vision cannot comprehend visually.55
Truth proper, like the aperture, is the source of the appearance which at once
sustains and eludes the appearance. The full discovery of this field occurred by
way of Lacan as a retort to the failure of post-1920s analytic psychoanalysis and its
inability to quell the analysands resistance to psychoanalytic interpretation.
Conventional psychoanalytic methodologies demonstrated an inability to predict
and overcome the integration of their discourse into the common knowledge of
the public. The analysands resistance to analysis thereby stemmed from the
predictability of the meaning ascribed to her symptom by the analyst. To combat
the analysands resistances to interpretation, Lacan proposed that analysts
reformulate the ceremonious methodologies of Freudian psychotherapy.
Henceforth, the Lacanian school of psychoanalysis called for analysts to move
away from the seductive methodology of interpretationwhereby the analyst
decoded the manifest content in order to reveal an objectively observable latent
contentand to move towards the disruption of the meaning-production process
itself.56 Lacan lucidly informed us that analysis reveals the truth [ . . . ] by making
holes in meaning the determinants of its discourse.57 This means that the other
side of truth, non-sensical speech, reveals a key to the analysands symptom. Yet,
the production of meaning during analysis was always an immanent consequence
of treatmentas an analyst one cannot sit quietly and expect the analysand to
overcome her perversions miraculously, similarly one cannot interject the totality
of the analysands utterances. Rather, interpretations after Lacan were to aim
towards the production of effects which may or may not correspond to the
apparent facts of the analysands discourse. These effects were to provide points of
departure for rethinking the symbolismor recirculating the signifiersof the
discourse at hand.58
Bataille shared Lacans distrust of meaning-production processes. We have
reason to believe that Bataille and Lacan, because they were close friends, were
hovering around the same understanding of truth. Consequently, while the texts of
Lacan and Bataille demonstrate real differences, there is reason to believe that
reading the texts of the one will help to reveal something about the other. Like
Lacan, Batailles entire work depended quite fundamentally upon this distinction
between latent and manifest truths: You must know, first of all, that everything
that has a manifest side also has a hidden side. Your face is quite noble, there is a
truth in your eyes with which you grasp the world, but your hairy parts underneath
your dress are no less a truth than your mouth is.59 This is to say that Batailles
entire exposition intended to produce effects of consciousness in the reader. The
latent truth thus cross-cuts every discourse precisely where they are lacking in
244
Adopting the same logic, Bataille argued that the function of the State consists
of an interplay of authority and adaptation [ . . . ] The reduction of differences
through compromise in parliamentary practice indicates all the possible
complexity of the internal activity of adaptation required by homogeneity [ . . . ]
But against forces that cannot be assimilated, the State cutes matters short with
strict authority.64 Whereas Day found an alternative to the self-preserving logic of
the state-form in the practices of the post-anarchist newest social movements,
whose autonomy was said to render state-logic redundant,65 Batailles perspective
offers little hope for autonomous ethical activity because, quite simply, there is no
place from which to safely mount a resistance from the State. Rather, for Bataille,
245
duane rousselle
the State depends upon all fixed ethical activity: the State derives most of its
strength from spontaneous homogeneity, which it fixes and constitutes as the rule
[ . . . ] [I]solated individuals increasingly consider themselves as ends with regard
to the state.66 On the other hand, real heterogeneity cannot be defined around the
principles of social movement theory because it cuts through any models that
would attempt to contain itheterogeneity is the refusal of discourse as such (and
yet it flows through discourse as its constitutive lack). As Jesse Goldhammer has
put it, [Heterogeneity] encompasses everything that is unproductive, irrational,
incommensurable, unstructured, unpredictable, and wasteful.67 In this sense,
Batailles work criticizes any radical identity; it refuses all such attempts to
translate negative truths into positive appearances unless to provide approximations of the truths of general state power (I will return to this concept of the
general state shortly).
Batailles refusal of the positive also led him to trace a logic of duality inherent
to movements of heterogeneity. For example, Bataille has distinguished between a
heterogeneity that occurs within the positive content of any discourse and a
heterogeneity that occurs exclusively within the negative content: the general
positive character of heterogeneity [ . . . ] does not exist in a formless and
disoriented state: on the contrary, it constantly tends to a split-off structure;
and when social elements pass over to the heterogeneous side, their action still
finds itself determined by the actual structure of that side.68 Hence, there is a
determined relationship upon the positive heterogeneous social movements by the
homogeneity of restrictive State logic. To the extent that social movements
attempt to disrupt the logic of the state, they do so in obverse proclamations, in
their untranslated ethical systems which remain outside of ideological
justifications. In this sense, Batailles truth and anarchisms truth converge by
way of their rejection of what currently exists in the world (contra the naturalism
of Petr Kropotkin et al.). Nonetheless, my argument is that any claim of a
convergence of anarchist philosophy with Batailles philosophy must be met with
suspicion. We must take seriously the question of appropriation when reading any
work that attempts to fit Bataille into a pre-existing political tradition.
Any approach that reduces the complexity of Batailles truth to a political
categorization implies a fundamental misreading of the work.69 We must also be
suspicious of any interpretation of Batailles work. For instance, hermeneutical
investigations into the truth of the text have tended to oscillate between readings of
the objective text and interpretations by the reader of the text while never settling
upon either of the two poles.70 For the contemporary hermeneutic methodologist,
there are thus multiple truths granted to any historically situated text. But
Batailles truth challenges hermeneutical methodologies on their presupposition of
a transparent intersubjective dimension to communicative acts.
The problem of reading Bataille amounts to a central question about faith: how
can it be that Bataille is being faithful if, in considering the truth of his text, we end
up none the wiser?the paradox is that Bataille was and was not being faithful
to us through his writing: A book that no one awaits, that answers no formulated
question, that the author would not have written if he had followed its lesson to the
246
letter [ . . . ] This invites distrust at the outset.71 The seduction of the propositions
in Batailles oeuvre enters by way of the negative expression of truth rather than
by way of its positive manifestationshis text is a description of its failure and his
positive propositions are metaphors that allow us only fleeting glimpses of
his truth. Conversely, hermeneutical methods reduce this negative expression to a
positive doctrine by rendering the heterogeneous descriptions into homogeneous
utterances or positive heterogeneities.
Hermeneutic methodologists are intent on revealing the discoverable portions
of the text. Noys was acutely aware of Batailles struggle to write the history of the
unfinished system of non-knowledge:
The play of [heterogeneity] dominates not only Batailles writing but also those who try to
interpret his texts. Bataille was [ . . . ] trying to describe an [ . . . ] economy, one that no
writing, or any other action, could reckon without and could never entirely reckon with. This
means that to write about Bataille is to be forced to engage with the effects of [this] economy
[ . . . ] it can never be reduced to the empirical description of this play.72
duane rousselle
particular; its logic is derived from the generalization of isolatable instances. Its
laws are based on calculation, profitability and usability. But Bataille insisted that
one cannot discover the general movement of this economy with the mind of a
mechanic whose knowledge about the whole comes only from his knowledge of
the problems within the particular automobile. The problem of conventional
economic philosophy has therefore also been the problem of the fallibility of the
logic of utility.
It is possible to imagine an economy whose energy is fuelled by squander rather
than by profit, an economy that disrupts the logic of utility and in doing so
provides the impetus for future economic arrangements. In the movement from
the logic of the one economy to the logic of the other, one also moves from the
particular standpoint to the general standpoint.75 Hence, the restrictive economy
depends upon the logic of utility within a delimited domain of material supply;
restrictive economy is thereby an economy of scarcity. In classical liberal political
philosophy, this scarcity is the cause for social war which, in turn, has provided the
requirement, ostensibly, for the state-form as an arbiterif, for example, there are
not enough resources to be shared there is reason to believe that those who are best
able to present the appearance of threat stand to benefit the most from the social
war of all against all. Conversely, Bataille argued that the general economy
depends upon the logic of destructive expenditure, of useless waste, within a
limitless domain of material supply; general economy is thereby an economy of
excess, of wealth.76 To adopt the vantage point of the general economy is thus to
begin from the presumption of surplus rather than scarcity77 and to undermine the
raison detre of the state-form in liberal political philosophy. Moreover, as I have
said, this surplus ensures the continual growth of particular economies of
scarcity[t]he surplus is the cause of the agitation, of the structural changes and
of the entire history of society.78
That the particular economies are founded upon the general economy does not
imply that they are embodiments of this economyinstead, they reveal an
altogether different truth whereby the particular economy takes on a short truthful
life of its own independent of the underlying truth of the general economy.
In contrast to the particular economy, the general economy is grounded upon an
inability towards closure and thereby threatens and indeed overcomes the limits
imposed by restrictive economies. In describing the general economy, Bataille
thus undermined the privileged and long-held axioms of conventional political and
economic ideology and subjected them to a superior law and economy: the latent
content. The latent content is the ungovernable portion of the ideology, its truth is
revealed by the endless disruption of manifest ideological systems. For Bataille,
the restrictive state [ . . . ] cannot give full reign to a movement of destructive
consumption,79 and so it must therefore obey the laws of expenditureeven
while trying incessantly to counteract themin order to achieve a semblance of
authority over a period of time with relative success.
Bataille forced his readers to think outside of the narrow definition of restrictive
economies and to think of economic activity as occurring across a broad range of
domains including, probably at its broadest level, discourse.80 According to Noys,
248
The accursed share is the non-recuperable portion that exists outside of every
economy; its promise is the immediate and eventual destruction of any ideological
system that appears to contain itit is the anarchistic current that has always been
existing with or without human intervention, with or without the subject as the
locus of ethical agency.
There is an apparent relationship between Bataille and Marxist political
philosophy. Like Marx, Bataille sought to describe the logic of failure inherent to
capitalism from the perspective of political economy. However, in doing so
Bataille greatly surpassed the restricted logic at play in Marxs texts. Whereas
classical Marxist political philosophy has centred upon its critique of conventional
economics (even while it did not perform a complete break from the logic of
utility, and, more problematically, from idealism),84 classical anarchist political
philosophy has centred upon a critique of the state-form. One detects a peculiar
omission in the writings of Georges Bataille which no doubt stems from his desire
to mythologize the discourse of scarcity and endless productivity pervasive in the
work of the political economists of his time. While it was no doubt important to
explore the notion of the general economy, Bataille did not give a name to the
metaphysical laws regulating this economy. At the restrictive level, this problem
has the analogy best exhibited by the traditional anarchist critique against the
political logic of the Marxists.
The oft-cited 19th-century anarchists (I shall restrict my focus to Mikhail
Bakunin and Petr Kropotkin) set out to discover a fundamentally different political
logic which was to be distinguished from the Marxist logic of class inherent in the
base/superstructure synthetic pair. What they found was that the Marxist analysis
of political oppression neglected the self-perpetuating and autonomous logic of
the state-form and that, according to Bakunin (and echoed by countless anarchists
249
duane rousselle
to this day), the Marxists do not know that despotism resides not so much in the
form of the state but in the very principle of the state and political power.85 For
the classical anarchists, the Stateas the fundamental wielder of power
represented the barbarity of the transfer of power from the people (the repressed
content) to the tyrannical group. The classical anarchists thereby argued that the
state was the ultimate riddle of power and must therefore be understood as the
guarantor of wealth for the bourgeoises. Saul Newman also described the stateform as the unique subject matter for the anarchists: [classical] [a]narchism sees
the state as a wholly autonomous and independent institution with its own logic of
domination.86 The problem of focusing only on problems of economy is also the
problem of ignoring the autonomous self-perpetuating logic of the state-form.
Anarchists have long argued that it is in the interests of the state to maintain its
legislating power over the peopleit is short-sighted to provide a telos of
revolution without taking this logic into account.
I have shown that Bataille has outlined a general economic model that
intervenes into the restrictive capitalist economic model. I shall now demonstrate
that there is a logic of the state-form which also occurs from within the general
perspective. Just as one can speak about matters of the general economy, one may
also speak about matters of the general state. To be sure, the general state and the
general economy, like their restrictive counterparts, are co-constitutive of the logic
of domination: according to Kropotkin, the state [ . . . ] and capitalism are facts
and conceptions which we cannot separate from each other [ . . . ] [i]n the course of
history these institutions have developed, supporting and reinforcing each
other.87 Bataille sufficiently intimated the logic of the general state-form, but he
did not give it a name. In the second chapter of The Accursed Share (Volume 1), he
described the Laws of General Economy and hence argued that the general
economy is the one that is governed by an authority far greater than its own.88 To
the extent that the restrictive state-form, according to Bataille, is homogeneity, the
general state is the no-thing that circulates flows of disruptive heterogeneity.
We may say that the logic of the economy occurs within the range of responses
to the question of epistemology in meta-ethical philosophy, whereas the logic of
the state-form occurs within the range of responses to the question of ontology.
Epistemological systems occur by way of economies, they are circulations and
have all the properties of movements/telos; ontological foundations occur by way
of state-forms, they are locations and have all the properties of spaces/categorizations. The general economy originates in a place and that place is the
sun: The origin and essence of our wealth are given in the radiation of the sun,
which dispenses energywealthwithout return.89 Bataille continued, the
brilliance of the sun [ . . . ] provokes passion [ . . . ] the least that one can say is that
the present forms of wealth make a [ . . . ] human mockery of those who think they
own it.90 It becomes increasingly clear that economies concern themselves with
production and consumption, but states concern themselves with distributionin
the general perspective there is a state that distributes scarce matter and there is a
solar state (approximately), or aperture, that distributes the wealth. In this sense,
the economy does not emerge from within the circulation of its own energy
250
duane rousselle
The seduction of the subject as the locus of ethical activity occurs, according to
Bataille, because the subject is the place for the construction of myths but is
herself also a myththere is hence a parallel to the Lacanian methodology. And
yet intimacy occurs without shape or form and thereby without myths. All of
Batailles myths are approximations of intimacy; they serve only as pathways
towards intimacy or as forms that are intended to seduce others into intellectual
contemplation. All positive elaborations on meta-ethics go against consciousness
in the sense that [they try] to grasp some object of acquisition, something, not the
nothing of pure expenditure. It is a question of arriving at the moment when
consciousness will cease to be a consciousness of something.97 It is only in the
failure to think that Batailles subject of intimacy, his sovereign subject, comes
fleetingly into being.
This idea about having nothing as its object comes painfully close to the postanarchist, and egoist anarchist, emphasis on the creative nothing. Here we are
provided with a useful point of departure for rethinking and extending the
subjectivist meta-ethics of post-anarchism,98 as well as contemporary readings of
the egoist anarchists such as Max Stirner, Renzo Novatore and others. Yet, it must
be highlighted that Batailles ethics are not subjectivist or relativist; they do not
aim to describe a moment of creativity as the elaboration of a positive episteme.
The subjectivists have retained the corporeal subject as the locus of ethical
activitythey have proclaimed with so much confidence: I am not nothing in the
sense of emptiness, but I am the creative nothing, the nothing out of which I myself
as creator create everything.99 On the other hand, Batailles sovereign subject is
grounded upon the nothingness of pure exteriority: sovereignty is NOTHING, a
nothing that is a slipping away of the subject [ . . . ] This slipping away is not
secondary because it does not happen to a subject who is secure or has integrity,
instead it reveals the unstable status of the subject.100 To be sovereign is not to
make a conscious ethical choice; rather, it is to recognize the sovereignty of being
that already exists and to give oneself away to it from within the imaginary of
everyday consciousness. The sovereign subject cannot be reduced to the
individuated ego;101 rather, it is at once the movement of consciousness that
compels the subject to disrupt her authority over her being (rendering her
252
Conclusion
There are opportunities to challenge the subjectivist reading of post-anarchism
(a la Benjamin Franks) by drawing from a range of continental philosophical texts.
Post-anarchists can forge connections with other radical philosophers whose work
has challenged epistemological foundationalism. For example, Saul Newman and
Lewis Call have both read post-anarchism alongside the psychoanalytic theories of
Jacques Lacan. However, both Newman and Call have perhaps failed to follow
through on a crucial insight from Lacans theories regarding the structure of the
unconscious: the subjects conscious affects and ego semblance are subservient to
an unconscious intersubjective structure. This intersubjective structure disrupts
the foundations of subjectivist meta-ethics. Franks argument that post-anarchism
is reducible to subjectivism, the belief that right and wrong are based on
individual opinion, relates precisely to this misreading of Lacanian theory.
253
duane rousselle
In other words, the problem that I am pointing out relates to this definition of
subjectivism and the imaginary lure of the affect or the cogito.
To conclude, post-anarchist philosophy should not be reduced to the
interpretation of its introductory period. Rather, it must be understood as bringing
the traditional anarchist discourse into a relationship with an outside. The critique of
ontological essentialism in post-anarchist philosophy has had its point of departure
in a crude form of epistemological relativism and meta-ethical subjectivism. I have
aimed to demonstrate that George Batailles anarchistic philosophy offers postanarchists another understanding of a radical outside to ideology. Post-anarchists
must break out of the universalist/relativist meta-ethical trap and embrace Batailles
paradoxical ethics as the precondition and realization of anarchist ethics. It is my
belief that the future of post-anarchism depends upon it.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Dr Richard J.F. Day, Dr Jesse Cohn and the
anonymous reviewers for their comments on an early version of this paper. I would
also like to thank David McFarlane for introducing me to Georges Bataille. A
version of the latter portion of this paper was presented at the 2011 biennial
Canadian Association of Cultural Studies conference at McGill University,
Montreal.
254
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
39.
(Eds), op. cit., Ref. 2; Sasha K., Post-anarchism or simply post-revolution? Killing King Abacus
(2004), available at http://theanarchistlibrary.org/HTML/sasha_k__Post-Anarchism_or_Simply_PostRevolution_.html (accessed 14 October 14 2010); Zabalaza, A platformist response to postanarchism:
sucking the golden egg, a reply to Newman (2003), available at http://info.interactivist.net/node/2400
(accessed 18 September 2008).
Evren, Introduction, op. cit., Ref. 5, pp. 910.
This same sentiment is recast for the usefulness of post-modernist philosophy: An anarchist engagement
with postmodernity would hence consist of an anarchist analysis of this conditionpotentially helping
anarchists to understand the socio-cultural dynamics of postmodern times. Cf. Gabriel Kuhn, Anarchism,
postmodernity, and poststructuralism, in Randall Amster, Abraham DeLeon, Luis A. Fernandez, Anthony
J. Nocella, II., and Deric Shannon (Eds) Contemporary Anarchist Studies: An Introductory Anthology of
Anarchy in the Academy (New York: Routledge, 2009), pp. 1819.
Evren, Introduction, op. cit., Ref. 5, p. 10.
Cf. May, Political Thought of Jacques Ranciere, op. cit., Ref. 8, pp. ixx.
Cf. Todd May, The Moral Theory of Poststructuralism (University Park: Pennsylvania State University
Press, 2004). One can surmise from Mays list of major publications that anarchist philosophy was only
integral to maintaining the project of post-structuralism: Between Genealogy and Epistemology (1993),
The Political Philosophy of Post-Structuralist Anarchism (1994), Reconsidering Difference (1997),
Our Practices, Our Selves, or, What It Means to Be Human (2001), Operation Defensive Shield (2003),
The Moral Theory of Poststructuralism (2004), Gilles Deleuze (2005), (The) Philosophy of Foucault
(2006), The Political Thought of Jacques Ranciere: Creating Equality (2008a), and Death (2008b).
Todd May, Is post-structuralist political theory anarchist? in Duane Rousselle and Sureyyya Evren (Eds),
op. cit., Ref. 2, p. 44.
Simon Choat, Post-anarchism from a Marxist perspective, Anarchist Developments in Cultural Studies,
1 (2010), p. 53.
May, Is post-structuralist political theory anarchist? op. cit., Ref. 15, p. 121.
May, ibid.
See, for example, Day, Gramsci is Dead, op. cit., Ref. 9, pp. 14, 127; May, Is post-structuralist political
theory anarchist? op. cit., Ref. 15, p. 57.
Lewis Call, Postmodern Anarchism (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2002), p. 117.
Evren, Introduction, op. cit., Ref. 5. Any umbilical cord that once attached David Graeber to the term new
anarchism has since been cut. In an email correspondence, Graeber insisted: If I end up being considered
the source of something like new anarchism (not even a phrase I made up, it was invented by the editor of
NLR [New Left Review], since you never to make up your own titles in journals like that), that would be a
total disaster! See David Graeber, The new anarchists, New Left Review, 13 (2002), available at http://
newleftreview.org/A2368 (accessed 25 October 2010); David Graeber, New Journal, Anarchist
Developments in Cultural Studies, Email Correspondence with Duane Rousselle (2010).
Cohn and Wilbur, Whats wrong with postanarchism? op. cit., Ref. 9.
See Jonathan Purkis and James Bowen (Eds), Changing Anarchism: Anarchist Theory and Practice in a
Global Age (New York: Manchester University Press, 2004), p. 5. See also Evren, Introduction, op. cit.,
Ref. 5, p. 4.
In particular those referenced in Ref. 10. The relationship between critics, proponents and ambiguous
endorsers of post-anarchism is a complicated one. Critics also demonstrate support at times and vice versa.
Cohn and Wilbur, Whats wrong with postanarchism? op. cit., Ref. 9.
Newman, From Bakunin to Lacan, op. cit., Ref. 3.
Amster et al., Contemporary Anarchist Studies, op. cit., Ref. 11.
Amster et al., ibid., pp. 24.
Amster et al., ibid., p. 4.
Amster et al., ibid., pp. 45.
Amster et al., ibid., p. 5.
Kuhn, Anarchism, postmodernity, and poststructuralism, op. cit., Ref. 11, p. 21.
Purkis and Bowen, Changing Anarchism, op. cit., Ref. 23, pp. 15 17.
Kuhn, Anarchism, postmodernity, and poststructuralism, op. cit., Ref. 11, p. 21.
Jurgen Mumken, Anarchismus in der Postmoderne (Frankfurt/Main: Edition AV, 2005), p. 11.
Evren, Introduction, op. cit., Ref. 5, p. 12.
Choat, Post-anarchism from a Marxist perspective, op. cit., Ref. 16, p. 54.
Simon Critchley, Infinitely Demanding: Ethics of Commitment, Politics of Resistance [2007]
(Brooklyn, NY: Verso, 2008), p. 125.
May, Is post-structuralist political theory anarchist? op. cit., Ref. 15, p. 64.
255
duane rousselle
40.
41.
42.
43.
44.
45.
46.
47.
48.
49.
50.
51.
52.
53.
54.
55.
56.
57.
58.
59.
60.
61.
62.
63.
64.
65.
66.
67.
68.
69.
256
Koch, Post-structuralism and the epistemological basis of anarchism, op. cit., Ref. 6, p. 26.
Koch, ibid., p. 26.
Koch, ibid., p. 38.
Koch, ibid., p. 37.
Newman, From Bakunin to Lacan, op. cit., Ref. 3, p. 174.
Sasha K., Post-anarchism or simply post-revolution? op. cit., Ref. 9.
Sasha K., ibid.
Benjamin Franks, Anarchism: ethics and meta-ethics, Anarchist Studies Network (2008), available at
http://www.anarchist-studies-network.org.uk/documents/Conference%20Papers/Benjamin_Franks_paper.
doc.
Allen W. Wood, Attacking morality: a meta-ethical project, in Jocelyne Couture and Kai Nielsen (Eds)
On the Relevance of Metaethics: New Essays on Metaethics (Calgary, AB: University of Calgary Press,
1996), p. 3.
The problem of ethical universalism is also obscured by such a position. I have argued this in my thesis
Kropotkin is dead: a second order reading of ethics in the philosophies of post-anarchism and Georges
Bataille. See Duane Rousselle, Kropotkin is dead: a second order reading of ethics in the philosophies of
Georges Bataille and post-anarchism (University of New Brunswick [Dissertation]: Harriet Irving Library,
2011).
Cf. Gavin Grindon, Alchemist of the revolution: the affective materialism of Georges Bataille, Third Text,
24(3) (2010), pp. 305317; Michael Richardson, Georges Bataille (London/New York: Routledge, 1994),
pp. 14; Scott Cutler Shershow, Of sinking: Marxism and the general economy, Critical Inquiry, 27(3)
(2001), pp. 486492; John Hutnyk, Batailles wars: surrealism, Marxism, fascism, Critique of
Anthropology, 23(3) (2003), pp. 264 288. For an account of the incommensurability of Marxism and
Batailles philosophy, see Fred Botting and Scott Wilson (Eds), Bataille: A Critical Reader (Malden, MA:
Wiley-Blackwell, 1991), pp. 910; Denis Hollier, The dualist materialism of Georges Bataille (H. Allred,
trans.), Yale French Studies, 78 (1990), pp. 124139.
Cf. Ben Dorfman, The accursed share: Bataille as historical thinker, Critical Horizon, 3(1) (2002), Cf.,
http://www.equinoxpub.com/CR/article/view/8181 as Retrieved August 15th, 2012; Martin Jay, Songs of
Experience: Modern American and European Variations on a Universal Theme (Berkeley/Los Angelas:
University of California Press, 2004), pp. 361 400 et passim; John Lechte, Fifty Key Contemporary
Thinkers: From Structuralism to Post-Structuralism (New York: Routledge, 1994), pp. 108136 et passim;
Benjamin Noys, Georges Bataille: A Critical Introduction (London: Pluto Press, 2000), pp. 1, 1617, 100
102, 130 135, 168 et passim.
Botting and Wilson (Eds), Bataille: A Critical Reader, op. cit., Ref. 50, pp. 57, esp. p. 6.
Georges Bataille, On Nietzsche (London: Continuum International Publishing Group), p. 173.
See etymonline.com (accessed 28 January 2011).
Noys, Georges Bataille, op. cit., Ref. 51, p. 30.
Cf. No Subject, Interpretation, available at http://nosubject.com/Interpretation (accessed 23 January
2011).
Jacques Lacan, The subversion of the subject and the dialectic of desire in the Freudian unconscious,
[1960] in Ecrits, 1st edn, trans. Bruce Finks (New York: W. W. Norton, 2006), p. 678.
Lacan, ibid.
Georges Bataille, Un Sie`cle dEcrivains (France 3; by Andre S. Labarthe). [Video, 1997], available at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v ivNTIeNIQ8I&feature related (accessed 31 December 2010).
Georges Bataille, Visions of Excess (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1985), pp. 137 138.
Bataille, ibid., p. 139.
See Mikhail Bakunin, Marxism, freedom and the state (1950), available at http://theanarchistlibrary.org/
HTML/Michail_Bakunin__Marxism__Freedom_and_the_State.html (accessed 14 April 2011).
Italics in original; Richard J.F. Day, Hegemony, affinity and the newest social movements: at the end of the
00s, in Duane Rousselle and Sureyyya Evren (Eds), op. cit., Ref. 2, p. 107.
Bataille, Visions of Excess, op. cit., Ref. 60, p. 139.
As Day has put it: [this] aims to reduce [the] efficacy [of state-logic] by rendering them redundant. [It]
therefore appears simultaneously as a negative force working against the colonization of everyday life by
the state [ . . . ] and a positive force acting to reverse this process (Day, Hegemony, affinity and the newest
social movements, op. cit., Ref. 63, p. 112).
Bataille, Visions of Excess, op. cit., Ref. 60, p. 139.
Jesse Goldhammer, The Headless Republic (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005), p. 169.
Bataille, Visions of Excess, op. cit., Ref. 60, p. 141.
Noys, Georges Bataille, op. cit., Ref. 51, p. 52.
257